Sebecloki's Untitled Campaign (Inactive)

Game Master Sebecloki

Everyone see if you can access this -- I might be able to use this to do what I want in terms of maps.

Owlbear

Password is Sebecloki

Ugh. It doesn't work. :(

I type in the password, hit join, then it wants me to enter password again.

Just a reminder, I don't own a computer. I do everything on an android phone (Moto G Fast, if it matters).

Alexandria gets an AoO against the grapple, right?

Everyone see if you can access this -- I might be able to use this to do what I want in terms of maps.

Owlbear

Password is Sebecloki

It opens but gives me "Unable to find owner for asset" and a blank map with a lot of text boxes with "registered nurse" in them

Alexandria gets an AoO against the grapple, right?

I do not because 15ft. reach.

I can log in but don't see much.

Zephira the Sylph wrote:

Alexandria gets an AoO against the grapple, right?

I do not because 15ft. reach.

Yikes! I forgot about the reach thing!

Hopefully one of us has a way to get you back, Alexandria!!!

nevermind, we'll stick with miro.

Ugh. It doesn't work. :(

I type in the password, hit join, then it wants me to enter password again.

Just a reminder, I don't own a computer. I do everything on an android phone (Moto G Fast, if it matters).

I think we're on the opposite ends of the tech spectrum -- I don't own and have never owned any kind of phone that's not a flip phone -- and I've never used a phone for internet anything (and I wouldn't either, I don't like the interface I've seen and I don't use apps of any kind or social media), so unfortunately none of that really means anything to me -- I've heard of androids, but I couldn't tell you what the difference between that and an iphone or an applephone or a blackberry is, if any, or if they're somehow the same -- they're just brand names of some kind of phone like thing I haven't and don't use, and have no interest in using, but that means nothing to me in terms of having any idea of what they do or don't do or might be able to do, and I have no baseline to compare it with because I don't do anything except call people on a flip phone. I have 0 social media, don't use apps, and I don't do any school or personal internet anything on a phone. I exclusively work on a desktop for any kind of gaming or computing. I don't use and wouldn't use a phone for answering email or anything internet related. I don't even text on it.

Ok. I hear ya.

Before I check out of this game, let's chat.

I lost my job today.

Life sucks.

I guess we're on the opposite ends of the spectrum.

I've been organizing Pathfinder Society games for 12 years here in Denver at various Game Stores and playing/GMing ever since. I've also been actively playing online PbP with only a smartphone since the pandemic.

I started playing D&D with the red box in 1979.

Ok. I hear ya.

Before I check out of this game, let's chat.

I lost my job today.

Life sucks.

I guess we're on the opposite ends of the spectrum.

I've been organizing Pathfinder Society games for 12 years here in Denver at various Game Stores and playing/GMing ever since. I've also been actively playing online PbP with only a smartphone since the pandemic.

I started playing D&D with the red box in 1979.

I've played RPGs for 30 years; my tech use is an outgrowth of my upbringing -- I was homeschooled and never had anything but a cellphone that could answer calls and basically do nothing else. I'm not someone that documents my life in pictures, so I don't need a phone to take pictures either -- I literally go years without taking pictures of anything. My parents don't do any kind of social media so I have no use for it because I don't use it to interact with them or my other family. I live in the middle of nowhere, so it wouldn't even be useful to call something like an uber -- I doubt you could get someone to drive out to where I live even if you wanted to pay for it. Everyone has a car to drive anywhere -- there are no side walks and it's not even a town -- it's fields with houses in it and some roads.

In my line of work you're not allowed to have a phone out at work -- the only thing you can use are landlines and the company issued phones that are only for paging other staff. You can get fired really easily if you post anything on social media someone takes umbrage at for any reason and they're aware of where you work because it's considered to be 'representing the organization'.

I lost my job today.

That does suck. Sorry to hear that.

I'm sorry to hear that happened, RFI. I've been there multiple times in the past few years, I know what a bleak feeling it is.

Guess who had too many drinks last night!?!

Thanks, guys. I'm all good.
Got another good job lined up.

Guess who had too many drinks last night!?!

Been there, done that. Glad to hear you are well!

Guess who had too many drinks last night!?!

Thanks, guys. I'm all good.
Got another good job lined up.

Hooray!

Is Alexandria's player going to create a new PC for the time being?

Alexandria's twin brother Alex?

You don't have to abandon Alexandria -- this is a side trek in an early dungeon magazine. You may have to be more tactical than run up to their tower and try to fight your way through -- a lot of the 2nd edition stuff is not balanced around the idea of facing everything down in back and forth blows, but that doesn't mean you strictly can't do it, you just need to think outside the box.

You don't have to abandon Alexandria -- this is a side trek in an early dungeon magazine. You may have to be more tactical than run up to their tower and try to fight your way through -- a lot of the 2nd edition stuff is not balanced around the idea of facing everything down in back and forth blows, but that doesn't mean you strictly can't do it, you just need to think outside the box.

We don't know this like you do. You're the GM. You read all of this stuff. We're trying to follow, but, it doesn't seem to work out the way you want it to.

"Well, this is a right mess -- we clearly shouldn't have tried to fight the flying brute, but we need to do something now, or they're going to feed the flame haired warrior to their giant insectile guard dog. If we had just given them a horse or run, we wouldn't be in this predicament. I'm not used to such rash action in my professional life -- I hope in the future we can all approach such situations with greater caution. I fear our quest will end in failure if we approach all obstacles with such obvious and blunt methods."

Case in point:

But we did.

I, Zephira, tried to do something.

"I hope in the future we can all approach such situations with greater caution..."

It seems like you have your own story to tell without our input.

I PM'd you about stuff, btw.

It seems like our actions mean nothing in this game. It's really bad form to have a player almost dead/killed in the first encounter in a new game.

Where's the archery contest from earlier? All of the other leads we had? And now our warrior gets carried off by an Ogre astride a Roc?

I think I need to pass on this game.

Sebecloki wrote:

You don't have to abandon Alexandria -- this is a side trek in an early dungeon magazine. You may have to be more tactical than run up to their tower and try to fight your way through -- a lot of the 2nd edition stuff is not balanced around the idea of facing everything down in back and forth blows, but that doesn't mean you strictly can't do it, you just need to think outside the box.

We don't know this like you do. You're the GM. You read all of this stuff. We're trying to follow, but, it doesn't seem to work out the way you want it to.

Luke Slade wrote:

"Well, this is a right mess -- we clearly shouldn't have tried to fight the flying brute, but we need to do something now, or they're going to feed the flame haired warrior to their giant insectile guard dog. If we had just given them a horse or run, we wouldn't be in this predicament. I'm not used to such rash action in my professional life -- I hope in the future we can all approach such situations with greater caution. I fear our quest will end in failure if we approach all obstacles with such obvious and blunt methods."

Case in point:

"We clearly shouldn't have tried to fight the flying brute...."

But we did.

I, Zephira, tried to do something.

"I hope in the future we can all approach such situations with greater caution..."

It seems like you have your own story to tell without our input.

I PM'd you about stuff, btw.

It seems like our actions mean nothing in this game. It's really bad form to have a player almost dead/killed in the first encounter in a new game.

Where's the archery contest from earlier? All of the other leads we had? And now our warrior gets carried off by an Ogre astride a Roc?

I think I need to pass on this game.

Luke is providing character-based input to what he thinks they should have done based on his character.

I'm trying to provide additional information in discussion because a lot of assumptions are being made like -- we have to go here, or we have to go there. I'm trying to make it clear there's not 1 route here.

You can't participate in the archery contest b/c you're a representative of the Duke -- did you even read that part?

I disagree with your assessment -- honestly, you're being a problematic player with all your criticisms and requests even for stuff that was made clear at the outset. You're trying to backseat DM from my perspective, and I don't appreciate it. I already tried to bring this up, but you don't seem to have absorbed that I don't want your constant input or direction -- I have my own style and preferences and I'm going to ultimately do what I want to do if I'm running the game. You seem incapable of just being a player and not trying to tell the DM what or how to do things or expect stuff to be done according to your preferences. I'm fine with you leaving.

Anyone else -- I don't cajole players to play. I have plenty of gaming to do and can find players who want to play how I want to DM and not try to tell me what to do. I'm happy just to cancel the game if we're not on the same page and I'll move onto another project.

Cool.

https://paizo.com/campaigns/v5748p75ivltz/gameplay&page=8#383

Leave if you're going to leave, please don't hassle me and argue.

Also -- not being able to participate in the archery contest -- I didn't make that up -- that's literally in the module. If you have an issue with that, take it up with the author of the module -- I resent all these reflexive bad faith assumptions about stuff that are based on not reading the gameplay thread closely or assuming I'm not doing what's in the module.

Case in point:
"We clearly shouldn't have tried to fight the flying brute...."

But we did.

I, Zephira, tried to do something.

"I hope in the future we can all approach such situations with greater caution..."

It seems like you have your own story to tell without our input.

I’m going to chime in.

As for me I am enjoying things.

As for a course of action as to rescuing Alexandria my PC would leaver her behind. As he understands things they are under a time constraint and barely have enough time to complete the task as it is.

However, he can be persuaded.

I'll be exiting too, then, albeit in less dramatic fashion. Frankly I haven't enjoyed things so far- I clearly have a different playstyle than the GM / some of the other players, and I feel it's making for a dysfunctional group, so best to exit and let the group adjust, re-recruit, if desired, and enjoy the game as they will.

I might suggest, though, that if Alexandria's player wishes to continue, you retcon things so that Arrock or Zephira were the one to get abducted and the other character left to try and rescue them. The benefit of this would be that it writes out two characters that are leaving and doesn't penalize a third character for not being able to evade a CR 9 monster's attack at 2nd level and then depend on the whims of the other players whether or not to be rescued.

I'll be exiting too, then, albeit in less dramatic fashion. Frankly I haven't enjoyed things so far- I clearly have a different playstyle than the GM / some of the other players, and I feel it's making for a dysfunctional group, so best to exit and let the group adjust, re-recruit, if desired, and enjoy the game as they will.

I might suggest, though, that if Alexandria's player wishes to continue, you retcon things so that Arrock or Zephira were the one to get abducted and the other character left to try and rescue them. The benefit of this would be that it writes out two characters that are leaving and doesn't penalize a third character for not being able to evade a CR 9 monster's attack at 2nd level and then depend on the whims of the other players whether or not to be rescued.

I'm not enjoying your contributions either so this is good to hear from my end. Anyone else who wants to try to tell me how to DM can leave too -- I'm not doing this backseat DMing business. I'd rather just shut down the game than have people constantly arguing with me about stuff -- I don't find the need to try to tell someone else what to do when I'm a player in a game -- I don't tell them what map software to use or how to design encounters or anything else. I just play what the game being offered is if I want to or I don't.

Zephira the Sylph wrote:

Case in point:
"We clearly shouldn't have tried to fight the flying brute...."

But we did.

I, Zephira, tried to do something.

"I hope in the future we can all approach such situations with greater caution..."

It seems like you have your own story to tell without our input.

I’m going to chime in.

1. It is well known that 1e & 2e are deadly and you shouldn’t always try to fight your way through every encounter.
2. At least 2 PC’s tried to point out that fighting this was a bad idea but people didn’t want to give up a horse.
3. This probably isn’t the game for you if you think threatening an Ogre on a roc is a good idea. This is the problem with pathfinder every encounter is balanced and players gravitate towards solving every problem with combat. In 2e you can’t do this.

As for me I am enjoying things.

This -- you had extra feats in builds to make characters stronger than normal 2nd level characters -- and you also had extra money for equipment. You actually had two characters with charisma based skills that could have been used, one which had already changed the ogre from hostile to unfriendly. There are a zillion tactics that can be used -- hide and shoot from a covered position; poison the horse that's offered as a gift; sneaking up or impersonating another entity -- claim to be a great mage that can kill with a word and use a charisma based skill to convince the monster of that. Even the grease would have worked to get the ogre off the saddle if the spell had worked, the dice just didn't agree. Trading blows on a one to one basis isn't always a good idea -- and in this case it was clearly telegraphed that it wasn't since you could see your opponents directly, knew they had a height and maneuver advantage -- and, despite having negotiated the situation out of combat with charisma skills, the characters fought anyway -- and did so just standing in front of the monster hitting back and forth like this was 5e. You weren't ambushed with no options -- there were several options and the one chosen wasn't a tactically wise decision.

I'm not just going to retroactively redesign encounters because characters make unwise decisions after a lot of active telegraphing it's an unwise decision. I would still give an opportunity to save the captured character and want to make clear they're not automatically dead -- I can't tell if players are reading the dialog closely after a couple of the last few posts that seem to indicate the situation isn't clear to them. The situation is -- Alexandria will be bug food if the characters do nothing, they'd have to detour to the ogre's tower to do something -- and, again, do something smart, not just run up to the outside, bash in the door, and expect to kill everything trading attacks round after round. Start a fire, hide, shoot from cover, set a trap, lure one out at at time, etc. etc. etc.

I think I'm gonna bow out too, not because my character got ganked, that's entirely on me for pushing my luck and forgetting how crazy Rocs actually were. But more just things are getting really busy and stressful on my end, I don't really have an immediate idea for a backup character, and I just don't need the level of negativity I'm feeling from this campaign on the OOC end. Sorry for any trouble I may have caused.

…doesn't penalize a third character for not being able to evade a CR 9 monster's attack at 2nd level and then depend on the whims of the other players whether or not to be rescued.

I guess this makes a good point about the difference in playstyles. Even the “third player” admitted it was on them, so I’m not sure I see them being “penalised”. And including the part about CR 9 vs 2nd level speaks to the expectations - it is a trope that older editions were predicated on the fact that the world was not fair and some encounters couldn’t be beat down, and current editions, particularly those with Organised Play are predicated on tiers of balanced power with enemies you can expect to at least challenge if not defeat. It is unfortunate, but a definite skewing of expectations. I kinda prefer the earlier style though definitely prefer the newer systems!

It is interesting to me that despite the “balance” of encounter and challenge rating, PF 2 is a little bit more of a meat grinder.

@Sebecloki, you have put up with a lot from the get go in this game, even in the Recruitment phase. I hope you don’t let this get to you!

I'm intending to continue -- no worries I'm quitting for those that still want to play. I'd like to get some new players.

And again -- this is a tactics issue -- the roc is CR 9, but the ogre isn't, and you attacked the roc instead of the ogre. It wouldn't have attacked you if the ogre didn't tell it to. If you'd dropped the ogre from the saddle, paralyzed him, or some other effect, that would have done it to. There was one ogre against 6 strong level 2 characters with extra feats, equipment, and skills points. You were also unlucky to miss getting initiative. There's no danger if I'm just going to handwave stuff if the situation is clear and the decision made is to do something super dangerous. You might have won if you'd gotten initiative and charmed the roc or something like that -- but you rolled the dice and lost.

My character tried to help, but he's an evil assassin, and he wouldn't have gotten into this combat, and would have run away if he was in serious danger. That's why he used a ranged weapon and didn't rush headlong. He was also trying to use poisoned bolts that might have taken down the roc quicker. Again, he just rolled poorly, dice sometimes don't go your way -- if he'd hit he might have poisoned the roc and convinced the ogre to disengage because he was concerned his mount was going to fall unconscious from poisoning midair.

I’m still in and enjoying it!

Ok -- updated the map -- if you look closely, you'll see the fork in the road by the lake -- you took the right fork as instructed by Jelmark, and went up the road to the end to the domed building, which I've added to the map. I have a different map for the inside I'll load if you go in. There's a huge arrow pointing to where Rudwilla's 'hut' (the domed building, it's a domed building with an antechamber in the adventure too), is located.

Map

Another option for everyone who wants to keep playing and we can't find more players easily -- the great OSR tradition of hirelings. We can just steal some appropriately leveled npcs from the pfsrd20 and maybe make a couple of small stat adjustments and have everyone run 1-2 of them as cannon fodder -- I mean scouts, guides, and companions :).

Are we looking for new players to join? Or going the route of controlled NPCs? I'd prefer the first, but I'm not sure how either would be brought in. Will we be passing through any towns soon?

Are we looking for new players to join? Or going the route of controlled NPCs? I'd prefer the first, but I'm not sure how either would be brought in. Will we be passing through any towns soon?

I'm open to either, but I'd rather get referrals than just put out another open recruitment. I think the hireling thing could be funny.

I'd have to write a town based encounter in -- the rest of this adventure is wilderness.

I’m fine with either too.

we could use This to quickly generate some more 2nd level flunkies with elite array.

I can stick a little village in the forest on your way out if you want a place to pick up some flunkies on your way from Rudwilla's 'hut' to the next encounter.

I’m posting this in all my games. We are expecting a major snow storm tomorrow. While I don’t expect to lose power or internet service it is always a possibility. If I don’t post tomorrow apologies in advance.

Just a heads up, I will be traveling today and I will probably not have time to post. Apologies. Please bot me as needed.

I chose raging dwarf (Barbarian 2) and storyteller (bard 2)

Story teller

Raging dwarf

only heard from Algrim for a spell, is everyone else still here?

Still here. Was traveling but back home for a few weeks.

I did look at the NPC list.... Why are all of the clerics evil? Can I just write up a couple simple NPCs? With Barbarian, Bard, Slayer and Investigator added, how about a Cleric of the Light (trainee from Father Eislar) and a witch?

Sounds good to me.

Two more for the party under one alias since they are NPCs.
Taking away an acolyte from Father Eislar Haman, Human Cleric to help us with healing and fighting undead.
And a little ratfolk witch to plague the enemy while cackling at them and disappearing.

Nice.